Create Custom Document Elements
Templates and building blocks
Save reusable work as a template: .dotx for a standard template, .dotm when it contains macros. Templates carry styles, content controls, boilerplate text, and building blocks forward into new documents.
Building Blocks (Insert > Quick Parts > Building Blocks Organizer) are named, categorized snippets stored in a template's building block collection, most often Building Blocks.dotx. AutoText is simply one gallery within the same mechanism, so it is not a separate feature. Cover pages, headers, footers, tables, and watermarks supplied by Word are all building blocks.
Content controls and fields
The Developer tab hosts content controls: plain text, rich text, picture, combo box (choose from a list or type freely), drop-down list (choose only), date picker, checkbox, building block gallery, and repeating section. Properties set the title, tag, placeholder text, and locking, including contents cannot be edited and content control cannot be deleted. Design Mode edits placeholder text.
Fields include MERGEFIELD, REF, STYLEREF, SEQ, DOCPROPERTY, and IF. Alt+F9 toggles field code view, F9 updates a field, Ctrl+A then F9 updates all, and Ctrl+F11 locks a field.
Generated elements
A table of contents builds from heading styles and outline levels, or from TC fields, refined by switches such as \o and \t. Captions use SEQ fields; a Table of Figures collects captions by label; an index depends on XE fields and an INDEX field.
Worked example
A TOC returns No table of contents entries found. The text merely looks like headings. Apply the built-in Heading styles, or assign outline levels in the Paragraph dialog, then update the TOC.